Comments

Comment by Cassey

This quest level was bumped up to level 70 with the release of patch 2.3

Comment by Ketho

If you zoom out to the Continental or World Map, you'll see purple skulls representing a necropolis on it. They wont show on the Zone map though

Comment by vreham

Does this happen at only certain times or constantly? Me and a Pally friend have been sitting in the Burning Steppes for quite some time with no luck finding one.

Comment by lemmix

Go to various invasion places located on map, green item drops occasionally which is used for this quest. Uncommon rarity so if you're in a group you'll have to roll.

happy scourge hunting!

Comment by Assassinman

You must complete the Under the Shadow quest in order to purchase from the Argent Quartermaster in Light's Hope Chapel - Eastern Plaguelands. To purchase these items you will need Necrotic Runes.

Comment by Mauthus

What seems to be the case (at least for me currently) is that not all the zones stated in the quest description will be under attack at once. I made the mistake of flying all the way to Blasted Lands, just to realise, as the above poster rightfully said, a purple skull over Eastern Plaguelands, where I had just come from.

As far as I can see now there is only one Purple Skull for the entirety of Azeroth at a time, I could be wrong. The skulls can only be seen on the second or third degree of zoom out on the map.

So don't do what I did and run off somewhere else only to realise you've gone on a wild goose chase.

Comment by Randsome

Didn't see anyone else mention it, but this quest and Shadows of Doom each gave me 150 AD rep.

Comment by tokaa

So how exactly do you get these? Tell me off if need be, but I don't seem to be able find a place which tells you basically.

I tried killing the mobs around the swirling pinky marks on the ground, but they just get 1-shot, and show loot, but don't give me anything :S

Are we meant to have the ardent dawn insignia on or? Trying to think how the heck we get these things :S I missed out on the tabard last year, so wanted a chance at this year before it goes.

Comment by tokaa

Okie, figured it out, and thankyou to Caffeine ^^

The mobs are about 66+ and have a good chance of dropping those Necrotic Rune's. They're bop, and you seem to be able to stack a lot of them. About 50% drop rate?

The shadow mobs for the other quest, have 30 on them, and I think (from memory) about 110k hp? They can be stunned too, which is helpful :D Specially if theres only a few of you, one can kite it if you don't have a healer with you.

Comment by Nechr0m

We are waiting for 1 hour at summoning circle but nothing happen...There are no scourges and shadow of doom or something.What we need to do?

Comment by so0le

Spent an hour travelling around Winterspring looking for a floating necropolis. Found none. I only found 4 purple glowing spots on the ground and stood there for 10min, saw no scourge and I can now officially claim that this the most annoying event quest in the game. And also no purple skulls on my map.

Comment by thesalsa

The necropolis ships spawn in the zone that have a skull on them on the World or Continental map. There may be one or more of them in the zone. I'm not yet sure if they always spawn in the same spots but go around the map and watch the sky - they stand out and will shoot out 'shadow bolts' to nearby summoning circles.

The summoning circles are always nearby and the active ones can be found by watching the 'shadow bolt' animation that shoots from the necropolis ship. Follow the direction of the 'shadow bolt' to the summoning circle and kills the mobs in that area. If you do not see the shadow bolt shooting from the necropolis ship to a summoning circle, it means other players have already stopped the ritual and that area is no longer active. They have a high chance of dropping a Necrotic Rune - I got one about every 2 or 3 mobs.

Every so often (I was there for about 5 minutes before it happened), 4 mobs appear around the crystal in the summoning circle and speaking with them allows you to use 8 of the Necrotic Runes to stop the ritual. Once you do that, they spawn into a Shadow of Doom which needs to be killed for a quest. There was over ten people at our summoning circle and we just aoe'ed them down but with decent gear and being smart I bet they could be soloed. They can be feared, stunned, snared, etc so do what you can. Also when you summon the Shadow of Doom, attack it right away to prevent others from tapping it.

Hope that helps to anyone who is a bit lost for this quest.

Comment by Hieronymeus

i don't get this i had the purple skull mark over blasted lands went there found the necropolis found a summoning circle stood there near half an hour no mobs spawned the area still had the purple skull over it when i left cause ppl that were wait much longer than me informed me none had spawned while they were there is there some thing we all missed to get the damn guys to spawn or just a problem on the servers side

Comment by tntiseverywere

Making a targeting macro like:

/tar necrotic shard

could help searching in areas like Tanaris that there is too much dust and you can see clear.

Comment by paxmonger

You know, I can understand that Blizzard has to keep their long-time players happy, and as such need to keep introducing bigger nastier bosses, achievements, and quests. But they're also running this "recruit-a-friend" thing, which means there are a LOT (and I mean a LOT) of newbie players.... most of which are getting slaughtered in this zombie invasion. There doesn't seem to be any zombie quests for THEM to complete (lower levels of assignments for the Argent Dawn) and many of them have been heard on the general channels complaining about "why did I sign up for this game if there's nothing fun for me to do and all I get is killed by zombies?"

If I were a game programmer for Blizzard, I would make sure the massive influx of new players who are levels 1-60 or so had something to do in this pre-expansion event, otherwise they risk not only missing out on a lot of people buying the expansion, but likely losing monthly revenue from actually losing players frustrated by dead NPC's and being turned by zombies every time they head into a city to turn in a level 23 quest......

Comment by Valrick

There doesn't seem to be any zombie quests for THEM to complete (lower levels of assignments for the Argent Dawn) and many of them have been heard on the general channels complaining about "why did I sign up for this game if there's nothing fun for me to do and all I get is killed by zombies?"

There are actually a couple of quest for lower levels. The "Investigate the Scourge of..." quests are around level 8 I believe, although I may be wrong.

Comment by Pennymandude

Good luck trying to finish this quest if you're on a populated server.If you don't have any instant ranged abilities to tap the mobs that spawn, you won't finish this quest on high population realms.Best way to do it is to wait in an area without a purple skull on the map but in the place they usually appear,it's much less frustrating than getting there too late and not being able to tap anything yourself.

At the same time, if you've finished this quest, be courteous and fair in the sense that there are people who haven't completed it.

Comment by Valrick

Thinking of other people's circumstances is polite as a character trait... but should be a business necessity on the part of Blizzard.. unless they've made some kind of covert deal with Intel or Nvidia or someone... making it necessary to buy some big maxed out graphics card (ie revenue for the hardware company) because they've got so many millions of people playing now... this all could be $$$$ related... and it wouldn't surprise me, given all the gadgets and retail stuff popping up surrounding WoW... guild teeshirts, minis, key scramblers, etc....

I am going to make the assumption here that you are what could be referred to as a "casual" player. Therefore I think it is relevant to point out that it is clear that the game is becoming more and more tailored to casual players. Recruit-a-friend, PvP epic's, badge loot, daily quests and now 10 man raids for all.

Another example of how Blizzard tries to cater to all would be the way in which they are squeezing every last drop from the graphics engine they have so as to keep system requirement low. I know of people with horrendous systems that still run WoW well. Perhaps you should check if the new shadows are turned off, as I think they were auto-turned on with the patch? Dropping these out would most certainly improve performance.

Also, I believe the lag is server side and therefore nothing to do with whether or not you have a "big maxed out graphics card."

Comment by Daveyray

I have a mage, 59th level. He got the quest, found the circles, and ... couldn't do a thing. First, there were forty or so other people (mostly 70's) there killing everying in sight. And even when I was able to get a bead on an untagged mob, none of my spells worked. So ... why was I given this quest when it is totally impossible for me to complete at this level?

And yes, this event sucks if you're trying to level a low-level character. None of my alts is above 40. They can't do a thing. My mage can do a little, but still has a rough time turning in quests or going into a city. For higher-level characters, it's turned into Doom-style leveling ... forget about quests, just kill things, get rep with the Argent Dawn, and if you make it to an even level hope you can make it back to your trainer. (Mages have it a little easier, since their teleport takes them to the trainer ... other classes may have a bit more of a problem!)

All in all, I think Blizz geared this for 70's. Which is fine, but making low-level characters basically nearly impossible to level for almost a month was, IMAO, not the best choice. I can only hope that it'll get better, but I doubt it. I was happy to see some lowbie quests, though quite a few clueless 70's just stood around the circle one-shotting the mobs you need to kill for that quest. Is being a jerk a requirement for level 70? I may never make it then.

Comment by Vadelus

The invaded regions are prone to unbelievable lag. At the Necrotic circles themselves, don't expect to be able to see whats going on, even with a high end internet provider.

Comment by jkanevad

Comment by Tyrnus

I would also like the lvl req confirmed please. I am lvl 35 and was going to have some friends of mine help me get runes for the event. I recently switched servers to play with some friends and rerolled, vet player, new char. Too bad it looks like I may have to miss out on this rather awesome event.

Comment by Grimclaw

For the first few days, at least, this will be heavily overfarmed, often 15-25 people farming the same Invasion node. Most people might wanna just wait out the initial surge.

However... Some classes have distinct advantages. :)

For example, as a Moonkin, I can killsteal a whole wave of spawns with one cast of Starfall, and score 3-4 Runes off one spell. There's so many people crowded in so small a space, feel free to bend your ethics a little. (If ethics never bothered you, might wanna had a little tab/moonfire spaming).\

Players killing each other as zombies, and genuinly ruining the game for everyone? Use that to fuel your anger powered kill stealing, this event was clearly designed to @#$% PEOPLE THE HELL OFF!

Comment by Seersha

This is a veeeery competitive quest! Basically, on your continental map (Eastern Kingdom seems to be the most popular) you'll see a PURPLE SKULL in one of the countries. That skull means that country is currently being invaded by scourge.

Fly to the country that is currently being invaded. (Let's say it's Eastern Plaguelands) and once you land ride roughly towards the spot in the country where the purple skill is located. (Or just follow the hordes of others running in the same direction) and you'll fine a big crystal with lots of pink magic circles around it. These spawn scourge. You want scourge. Try and beat as many players as you can to the scourge mobs because they drop NECROTIC RUNES! You need these runes to complete this quest and also as currency to get things like the argent dawn tabard.

This will probably take several tries. The drops on the necrotic runes seems to be alright, maybe a little less than a 50% drop.

**If there are no purple skulls on the map currently just wait a bit, more will pop up soon.

Comment by mikemil828

Can be easy or difficult to do depending on your class, magical classes can simply spam aoe and get themselves a whole lot of shards regardless of whether or not they kill anything, for melee classes it becomes a matter of who has the fastest reaction time, trying to beat the magical classes to the mob.

Comment by caus

Just got in a group and hit out about 4 spawns. from this i was able to get 3k worth of AD rep from scourgestone handins, and enough necrotic runes to buy about 8 items form the quartermaster. The equipment for a holy priest seems to be on a lvl with D3 set items, threfore if your just hitting 70 these items will help take you to kara and heros, however the equipment does have another use if your a chanter, it is all disenchantable, from my 4 spawns I have got 13 void crystals from the DE, thats 400g on my server. - recap, I think this is an easy way to move towards exalted with AD while (if your a chanter) making money. To be able to DE the items you will need 300+ enchanting..

Comment by 4horsemen

God stop complaining you only have to deal with this for a few more weeks, some people are actually having fun, if your a low lvl getting killed... well then go lvl, I don't pity you dying over and over, hit 70 then we'll see.

Comment by Mystikan

I must not be playing the same game. I can find the floating fortresses readily enough, but there's never anything noteworthy on the ground near them, purple skull or no. Loads of people sitting around Light's Hope Chapel and Morgan's Vigil etc looking stupid, but nobody's actually going anywhere or doing anything... just sitting around the flight points asking where all this is supposed to be, with nobody answering. After two straight days of this BS, I simply tossed the quest and went back to my dailies. Not worth the waste of time running around looking for stuff that isn't there.

Fail, Blizzard. Epic Fail. :(

Comment by Nubtrain

When you port to Stormwind there's a scourge right besides the tower fighting a NPC, you can kill him for a rune, you won't get it everytime though and I don't know the respawn rate =/

Comment by vexis58

Since this event will probably be removed at or soon after the release of WotLK, a friend and I are picking up this quest on our level 50 alts just so that we can get the tabard feat. Having a friendly 70 to kill mobs for you makes it possible.

Comment by insanniac

are these still useful after the WotLK came out?

Comment by Gammosh

Hello, Its 3.3 now, can i do this quest? Can i get the Argent tabard? I have the quest listed in my log...

Under the Shadow

This quest is no longer available within the game.

Check your map to find an area under Scourge attack. Go there and damage a necropolis by defeating the Scourge around them. Return 10 of their Necrotic Runes to Commander Thomas Helleran at Light's Hope Chapel in the Eastern Plaguelands.

Description

The floating necropolises of the Scourge plague the lands of Horde and Alliance alike. Tanaris, the Blasted Lands, Winterspring and the Burning Steppes are blanketed in the shadows of the flying fortresses.

Only through our combined efforts will they be repelled.

Each necropolis is supported by nearby magical circles, and among each circle swarms a host of undead creartures. We have determined that destroying these mindless hordes will destroy the circle's defenses.